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It’s not so much the comments she minds, as that they don’t seem to make any particular effort to keep them secret from her. Phil expects better from her agents. Though at least they aren’t quite as crude about it as some of the DoD liaisons. Phil has overheard more variations on ‘diversity hiring’ than she has energy to fight about. “A black guy with an eye-patch, a girl, and a dyke.” The prime topic of conversation seems to be what secondary box Maria is ticking, given that just being female isn’t notable enough in this organisation. Phil could point out a number of things: that if diversity hiring was truly in operation, there would be a hell of a lot more diversity in her junior agents; that there isn’t the space for her, Maria or Fury to be anything less than excellent; and also that she isn’t technically a dyke. She’s a woman who fucks men (and some women), and that’s not quite the same thing. Still, she’s used to the misunderstanding. Her underlings, however, should be trained better than to ever let her hear those sorts of whisperings – as a senior member of a covert organisation, she’s more than mildly offended that she has to point out the value of discretion.
Maria just shrugs. “Men talk. Better about us than their missions.”
Phil concedes this point. The relevance still escapes her, but that had always been the case. She blames her mother, really, for being so unfazed by Phil turning fifteen and shaving her head. It had given Phil the idea that the people who mattered wouldn’t care. They didn’t care so much in her small high school, although at this distance Phil now suspects her mother may have had a hand in that too. At college, the lesbian implication had made itself known to her, even though she’d let her hair grow out a little by then. In law school they had all assumed she was going to go out to Washington and join a lobby group and fight the good fight. She did, in a manner of speaking, but apparently the military thing was a shock. Again, her mother was unperturbed.
Clint looks at her one day and asks, “You know they call the three of you Fury’s Angels?”
Phil says, “I assume Natasha is the third? So what does that make you?”
Clint shrugs. “I forget the name of the other guy. He was boring anyway.”
Phil gives this the courtesy it deserves. “Was there anything you needed, Agent Barton?”
“No ma’am.” He walks with Phil to her office anyway. Some of the agents in the bullpen – Langer, certainly, and possibly Armstrong – watch the way Clint follows her in and closes the door behind them. She’s tried before to stop Clint from doing this kind of thing – she has work to finish – but he has worse habits than sitting on the floor of her office waiting for her to find him something to do. He picks up a scrap of paper from the chair and folds it into a narrow missile. When it bounces off the side of her head, Phil lifts it from the desk and tucks it behind her ear, pushing the loose hair back.
*
The first op she worked with Clint, she didn’t see him for twenty-seven hours. He had been out with a team, doing recon around an industrial bunker. The mission had gone south – the target had spotted Clint’s handler and the back-up team. The agent in charge had been killed and the team pulled back, with Clint still in enemy territory. Clint had been alone out there for two days before Fury was able to scramble a recovery team.
Phil was sent out to meet up with the remnants of the mission team. At the time, she had thought the sniper was probably already dead – she couldn’t see how he would have managed out there on his own with the target looking for him. Natasha had seen Barton in action, and she hadn’t been so sure.
Phil got into range and tried SHIELD secure frequencies one by one. “Hawkeye? Hawkeye this is SHIELD, please respond.”
Finally, she got a heavy silence instead of just crackle. Then: “This is Hawkeye. Who am I talking to?”
Phil had exhaled. “This is Agent Coulson. I’m going to bring you home.”
Barton’s voice was barely a whisper. “The mission? I have the intel, I can still take it.”
“Hawkeye, where are you?”
“In position, as ordered. I can finish this, if someone can-.”
Phil made a decision. “I have the plans. I can guide you through if you think you can do it. We don’t have the manpower for a retrieval from inside - there’s just me.”
“I can work with that,” he said, and she couldn’t picture what he must look like at that moment, smiling. All she had right then was the photograph on file. “And afterwards?” he said.
“Afterwards, I’ll guide you back to me,” she said, “and we both go home. Sound good?”
“Yeah, that sounds- yeah.”
Phil had guided him in and out of a heavily guarded base and then back through the forest to her truck. She didn’t catch sight of him until he wanted her to, appearing out of the shadows between the trees. He was filthy, covered in mud and bits of foliage. He brushed himself off and then moved towards the truck.
Clint’s eyes had tracked across the SHIELD operatives and she was prepared for him to miss her. It happens; they don’t match her voice to her form. Clint’s eyes met hers, sure. “Agent Coulson?”
“Barton.”
He nodded, taking his gaze away from hers to brush the floor and then back again. “Thanks for the rescue. I wasn’t sure anyone was coming.”
She hadn’t quite known how to respond to that. “Stow your things, let’s get you home.”
He sat in the front seat beside her, not letting go of either the package he had been told to collect, or the lethal-looking bow. He settled low in the seat, looking at the path ahead. He had probably been awake for three days straight.
“Rest your eyes,” she told him. “I’ll wake you when we hit the border.”
She expected him to fight her on it. He tucked his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Barton-.”
His eyelids flickered. “You don’t like ma’am?” he murmured.
“It’s fine. Go to sleep.”
He hummed, a tired sound that might have been ‘ma’am’ again, and this time he was definitely asleep. He stayed that way until they reached the border, when she tapped his arm.
*
Phil is never entirely sure, even years later, whether it was that first rescue op that did it for Clint. But it becomes clear over the next few months that he is essentially refusing to work with anyone else. He’ll let other agents fly him and Natasha places, if that’s all they’re doing. But if an operation requires a senior agent as mission control, Clint works with Phil or with Director Fury. Phil finds this more than a little infuriating, given that she outranks Clint but apparently doesn’t have the sway to refuse to work with him. Some days, when he’s just pulled a life-threatening stunt that left her gasping, heart pounding in her chest, she wants just a little time away from him. Except when she sends him out with Sitwell, or any of the other agents she nominally trusts not to get people killed, Clint somehow always comes back bloody. She more than half-thinks he does it on purpose.
Phil sits by his bed in medical and takes notes. It’s late, and Doctor Clemons gives her a long strange look when he leaves at the end of his shift. Phil has been there a few hours now, trying to get the mission details fixed, since Clint is in no position to write his report. They’re just about done now so she should go.
Clint frowns at her. “Leaving already?”
“I have enough for today. I can get the rest from Sitwell - you should get some sleep.”
“Every time you come save me, you want me to sleep. You ever notice that?”
“No, Barton, I hadn’t.” She wants to go home and curl up on the couch and watch bad television. She still feels sick from the sudden rush of adrenaline, long faded now, and she knows her own body. She knows what she needs to make that feeling go away.
Clint lies down in the bed and stares at the ceiling. “I noticed it.”
Phil sits in the uncomfortable chair and asks, “Did you want something?”
“Talk to me.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something I don’t know.”
She smiles at that. “Anything in particular? Or should I just pick a topic and keep going?”
He glares at her. “Something about you. You weren’t born in pantsuits and sensible shoes, right? Though I can’t actually picture you in normal kid clothes, thinking about it. Maybe you did go to kindergarten like that.”
“My mother dressed me in skirts until I was four,” Phil says. It’s more than just Clint that didn’t know that. She’s not sure where the words came from.
Clint doesn't say 'and?' He says, “That's when you told her to stop?”
“Yeah.”
“And she did.”
“Yeah.”
Clint says, “I'd like to meet your mom.”
Phil doesn't say 'okay'. She says, “I don't get home much.”
Clint smiles, more or less, and says, “Yeah, me neither.” Clint gives away too much when he speaks, for someone like Phil who knows how to read him. She suspects that's why he's quieter around everyone else. She wants to touch his hand, or whatever normal people do for comfort, but she nods instead.
*
Phil is not a patient woman. At least, she is perceived as impatient, whenever she tries to follow up on missing paperwork, or tardy agents, or under-attended meetings. She notices that no one ever accuses Director Fury of caring too much about small details. Then, no one ever accuses Fury of a lack of sense of humour either (to his face or otherwise – no one ever believes they’re quite out of his sight).
Phil knows she has a sense of humour, she knows she reacts exactly the right amount to incompetence amongst her agents, and she knows that if she was not impatient, things wouldn’t get done. If that makes her a bitch, then so be it. Get called the same thing more than a couple of thousand times and it starts to lose its sting.
(She had cared the first time, maybe. She had been more sensitive at fourteen, although even then she had been aware that ‘frigid bitch’ was a shitty kind of insult. Phil can be picky about who she lets in, but that’s a lesson she learned the hard way, and one she still forgets every now and again. Her last mistake was only two years ago, with a field agent who had been fun until the post-mission adrenaline had worn off. That was when he stared at her like maybe he had hitherto unknown magical powers that made his ice-queen lesbian superior want his dick inside her. She had laughed it off, still aching from shoving him against the wall and holding him there, and gone to find a ride home.)
Around about the time Phillipa Jane told her middle-school teacher that Phil wasn’t a nickname, it was her name and not a difficult one to remember, she picked up a reputation. That hasn’t really gone away.
Fury stares her out across the desk. “You’re still on the New Mexico thing?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t just because you don’t want to work with Stark?”
“I’ve tried working with Stark. Give Natasha a shot at him.”
Fury sighs and says, “Go chase your stardust.”
Fury trusts her to know her own mind, which is something Phil hadn’t realised she was missing until SHIELD. She had been working protection detail, and before that overseas, and then she had come home one day to find Fury waiting in her apartment. She wonders if he knows how close he came to getting shot that night, before she realised that breaking into houses was his recruitment M.O. Phil had been headhunted before, but Fury was the first to offer her something she actually wanted. Autonomy, he said, accountability, a team of agents, and all the red tape your little heart desires. He had been joking about the last part but not mocking her. She had taken the job. It’s not always all her heart desires but she never regrets saying yes.
Fury sends Clint to her when ‘anomaly’ gets upgraded to ‘aliens’. Because the Director does have his own particular brand of humour, he doesn’t let her know until Barton turns up at her door. Phil pretends that she already knew, but it’s a close thing.
So now Clint is with Phil chasing aliens, Natasha is on the Banner situation, and Fury is trying to get the funding to get the Initiative up and running (when he’s not trying to keep Stark alive). There are worlds coming together.
Phil doesn’t think of herself as an impatient woman, but they have been waiting a long time for this. Fury calls her in and folds his arms. He doesn’t smile when he tells her they’ve found Captain America. He tells her to breathe. This time he is mocking her a little, but she doesn’t mind. They have all been waiting a long time for this.
*
She doesn’t get along with Tony Stark.
This surprises precisely no one, but it is unfortunate, because Stark is important to the plan Fury is carefully setting in motion. Phil is also important to this plan, as Fury can only be in so many places at once and there aren’t many people he trusts to delegate to. So Phil practices her best cool stare and tries not to let Tony Stark get himself killed before they need him to save the world.
Once they’ve managed that the first few times, though, she starts to get a little bored.
Stark is resisting running a training scenario ostensibly because he enjoys pissing her off, though she suspects that maybe he’s a little bored too, because that has to be what makes him drawl, “Look, Coulson, I get that you like to be in charge and all but could you maybe dial down the ball-busting just a little? Speaking as the only one of us who doesn’t have to keep their dick in the nightstand.”
She blames the boredom, because otherwise her usual censoring would probably have kicked in before she replied, “Maybe, but mine’s still bigger.”
There’s an odd silence and she doesn’t want to look up from the reports to see. She doesn’t say things like that in front of the team. She lifts her head anyway.
Stark is grinning at her. He looks at her over his sunglasses. “You know what? You take this round.”
“Thank you,” she says dryly.
He makes a face. “And that was- I was maybe a little over the line there. So-.”
“If you apologise, I’m going to have to shoot you.”
He blinks. “Okay.”
She explains, “You occasionally remember to apologise to Pepper – which you absolutely should, don’t get me wrong – and I would bet that once upon a time you used to apologise to your mother. I’m sure she deserved it too. But don’t apologise to me. Do what I’m asking you to do.”
He salutes her lazily, grinning again. “Yes, ma’am. Pointless training session it is.”
Clint follows Phil out of the office. He bounces on his heels. “You realise you just bested Tony Stark in a dick-measuring contest?”
“Your point, Agent Barton?”
“My point, ma’am, is that this is why you’re my favourite.”
“Favourite what?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer, just salutes her too, and smiles.
*
Captain America is not disappointing. Phil has been waiting her whole professional life for the search for Captain America to bear fruit and the man himself is not disappointing. Meeting him, working with him, none of that could be called disappointing. It’s the way he doesn’t know how to treat her that is a little disheartening.
There’s a question they ask, sometime early in the SHIELD induction process. They ask who your hero was growing up. Presumably it’s to test your priorities, or your values, or maybe an oblique way of asking about your childhood. Phil has heard some strange answers to that question in her time. She asked Maria once, what her answer had been; Maria told Phil that she had said Peggy Carter. That makes sense: Carter had been one of founding members of SHIELD as it grew, heedless of what it must have taken to be a woman in a military organisation back then. Phil gets why Maria admired that.
Phil maybe hadn’t been so discerning. There is still a picture of Phil, eight years old with her two plaits pinned to the back of her head under a blue mask, holding a saucepan lid like a shield.
She answered that question with ‘Steve Rogers’ and tilted her chin up when they laughed.
Rogers doesn’t know how to treat her, and Phil doesn’t think that can be because she’s a woman, unless it’s because of the kind of woman she is.
Phil keeps her hair cropped to her ears, she doesn’t wear dresses unless it’s mandated, and most days she prioritises her caffeine intake over make-up. She’s tall enough already that she doesn’t need to wear heels unless she’s feeling particularly like frustrating Stark that day. She is, in brief, not much like most of the women Rogers would have known in his time. She can’t be sure that’s the reason for his diffidence around her, but every time he trips over ‘ma’am’ and can’t seem to settle his gaze when he meets her, she wonders.
Phil doesn’t normally care what people think of her, but this is Captain America. This matters enough to disappoint her.
It doesn’t matter enough to stop her from doing her job, and there is enough of that to keep them occupied. She puts it at the back of her mind until they’re sitting around a conference table late one afternoon and Clint is needling Stark about his own fanboy tendencies. “C’mon, I bet you had the footie pajamas and the posters and the fanclub memberships. No way you weren’t-.”
“I refuse to answer that. And anyway, who wasn’t a- I bet even Coulson had the posters on her wall.”
Clint turns in his seat, far too eager. “Ma’am?”
Phil snorts. “I grew up playing Captain America, Barton, of course I had the posters on my wall.”
Stark swings around to face her then too. “Did you play at being Steve, or Peggy Carter?”
Phil takes a second. She sighs, and sticks out her chin. “I played at being Captain America. Joanie Lucas across the street was always Bucky, because she was shorter.”
Steve’s laughter is quiet, barely audible. When Phil looks over the table at him, his face is pink. “Sorry. I just wish I could- Bucky’d never let that go, you know. But- um. Thank you.”
Phil shrugs. “It was a long time ago.”
“Still,” Steve says. He meets her eyes. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She is no longer eight. She has this conference room table for a shield, and her plaits were sheared off a long time ago. Phil still smiles back at the man who looks younger now than she feels. “It was a long time ago. But you’re welcome.”
*
Thor cannot, for all their best attempts, get the hang of her name. Phil would think, of all the differences faced by suddenly relocating to twenty-first century America, that the naming conventions that left her as Coulson would be the least of his worries. But he hesitates over the pronunciation often enough that it’s clear he finds it a struggle.
Over comms, during a quiet period in a mission, Phil sighs. “You could just say ‘Phil’, you know.”
He immediately argues, “I would not show such disrespect.” It’s not the woman soldier thing – Phil has met Sif, and she knows Thor is about as okay with women in combat as it’s possible for a Norse God to be.
She says, “Better that than have you keep stumbling over it on radio.” He had rendered it Coulsdottir just once, the same number of times Stark had said ‘Phillipa’ before resolving never to do it again. They try - it’s not enough some days but they do try.
She can hear Thor shaking his head. “Agent Coulson.”
Natasha cuts in. “My name’s wrong too, you know.” Phil has never asked about that. She knows that Romanoff should probably be Romanova but she also assumes that Natasha has her reasons. Those reasons may just be to mess with the rest of them, but that’s as valid as anything the others do.
“Your name’s not really your name,” Stark observes. “And I don’t think Thor should get to call Coulson Phil unless the rest of us can.”
She’s pretty sure Thor laughs. “Then Agent Coulson it must be.”
Phil hears a noise and then the floor collapses underneath her. It happens so fast there’s nothing to hold onto; she tucks her arms around her head and drops.
Phil opens her eyes and the light has changed. The air is still thick with dust, so she couldn’t have been out long. There’s not enough room to move. She goes still and listens.
“Coulson?” That’s Rogers calling for her. The others fill in (Thor included, she notes) with Clint the only one out of sync.
Clint shouts, “Phil? Ma’am?”
Phil tries to call back but there’s something pressing on her chest and she can’t get enough breath to yell.
She reaches out her right hand and finds metal. Phil smiles.
Minutes later, Stark is complaining, “Morse code, Coulson, really?
Daylight appears over her head.
Stark pulls the pipework away; Thor smiles widely at her. “Agent Coulson.”
Phil feels the ground shake. She is picked up gently in a large green hand. Hulk passes her up to the surface. He brushes down her hair and knocks the plaster dust from it with one finger. Phil manages a, “Thank you?” before he shrugs and wanders away. She’ll thank Bruce again later, though he won’t remember the incident. He’s in there somewhere.
Stark looks down at her. “We don’t get to rescue you very often.” He considers this. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
“Noted, Mr Stark.”
Clint crouches down at her side, looking more than usually serious. “Is this how it feels when I jump off buildings?”
“I don’t know,” she tells him, “how does it feel?”
He pokes her shoulder. She winces and Clint makes a face. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to- that wasn’t a demonstration.”
“Good,” she says. “Because it’s usually scarier than that.”
Clint goes to touch her arm again and decides against it. He straightens the collar of her jacket. “Yeah.”
*
Natasha goes off-grid during a mission out of the country. They wait to see if she’ll re-establish communications and then, when it becomes clear that something has gone wrong, Phil is given the unenviable task of letting the other Avengers know.
Clint asks the practical questions. “How long since she missed her last check-in?”
“Three hours now.”
“It’s not like her. Not unless something-.”
“What if someone grabbed her?” Stark asks.
Maria walks into the conference room. She spreads surveillance material on the table in front of Phil. “Here,” she says. She looks at Stark. “Then we’ll get her back. We have a team out there already.”
“We should go,” Steve insists.
“We’re following protocol.”
“She could be hurt. She could be- we can’t just leave her there. They could be hurting her.”
“Black Widow is a trained agent,” Maria says.
“They don’t train for…” Steve trails off. They have an agent missing and she’s a woman and this is suddenly an issue.
“Surviving enemy interrogation techniques is one of the first things SHIELD agents learn,” Phil says.
“That’s not the same as-.” He doesn’t want to say it out loud, Phil notes. They won’t say it, and Phil and Maria don’t need to. Anything could happen to them any time – it comes with the territory.
Maria snaps, “She’s a woman and she walks around this city alone at night. It didn’t magically become a possibility because she went missing in the desert.”
“Agent Hill,” Phil says quietly.
“I’m getting a team ready,” she says. “We’ll get her back.” She walks out of the room.
Steve looks after her. “I didn’t mean…”
“She knew what you meant,” Stark says. “She’s just-.” The two of them look at Phil.
Phil doesn’t let herself react. “She’s right.” Maybe that’s what they need to hear.
“About-?”
“One in six, that’s about the domestic number. There’s a few hundred women working in this building, there’s certainly more than six in my bullpen. At a certain point it just comes down to basic math.”
There’s an expression on Steve’s face that Phil cannot decipher, and she knows that in his head Stark is already back in the desert. On an average day, Natasha is better able to defend herself than most of the people in this room. On a day that’s not average, the only thing they can do is wait and see what they’re dealing with. There’s no benefit in guesswork.
Phil’s phone rings. When she answers, Natasha asks, “Can you find me a friendly airstrip?”
“Let me put you on speaker.”
“Why?”
Phil keeps her voice light. “Because your team want to hear your voice.”
Five heads snap around to look at the phone, which Phil sets carefully on the table. Natasha says, “I’m fine, Phil. I just need somewhere safe to land.” Phil waves her hand to get Darcy’s attention in the bullpen, and sends someone to get Maria and call-off the extraction.
When they get Natasha back to base, she’s bruised a little more than she had implied. The others fuss over her and she growls at them but tolerates it. She still challenges Phil to a sparring match on Friday.
Phil doesn’t know why Natasha bothers. On the range, Phil can match or outclass most of the other agents, but she’s never going to beat Natasha at hand-to-hand. Phil is good, but Natasha has moves that no one else can touch. It’s good practice for Phil, but not much help in keeping Natasha at the top of her game.
They train in groups a lot, SHIELD agents more than the field specialists, so Phil’s not so surprised to see Maria there as well. She vaguely recognises the blonde on the sidelines wrapping her hands. “Agent Carter, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That was good work in Cali. When did you get back?”
“Tuesday. Out again tomorrow. Agent Romanoff thought I might like a work-out.”
“Agent Romanoff should probably still be in medical,” Phil says, “but this is safer than trying to keep her there.”
Natasha coughs. “Are we going to spar or chat?”
“Fine, fine.” Phil gets up. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you just wanted to knock me on my ass a couple of dozen times before lunch.”
Natasha smiles, and says nothing. Phil is pretty comfortable being the least deadly person in this room. She’s good with hand-to-hand, and she’s given Stark the run-around a few times, but she’s not Natasha.
They swap, after a little while, so Carter can give Natasha more of a challenge. That leaves Phil and Maria. Maria’s nearly twenty years younger but she can be a little by the book. Phil gets her down on the mat.
Maria glares. “Best two out of three.”
Phil reaches down, and helps Maria to her feet. “All right then. Two out of three.”
*
Phil starts to coordinate teams. “Sitwell, hold the perimeter. Langer, the bridge. Hulk’s down.” She works her way across the street to where Hulk fell. Bruce makes a smaller target, but he’s also harder to find.
When she gets to him, Bruce blinks at her, fuzzy with the after-effects of whatever tech or magic they’re dealing with today. “Did you ever want kids?”
She really wishes this wasn’t on open comms. “Stay down, medical’s on its way.”
He’s still on the first thing, the way mildly concussed people will sometimes focus on a loose train of thought. “You never wanted a family?”
“No,” she says.
“Oh.” He shakes his head, dislodging plaster dust. Phil puts her hand on his chest to try and keep him still. Bruce says, “I didn’t, before. Not after… And now I do but I can’t have one.”
“You still have time,” Phil finds herself saying, the sort of placating nonsense she tries to stay away from. The lives they lead aren’t meant for families.
“No,” he says. He trembles underneath her hand. “But you would have been good at it.”
Phil says, “No, I wouldn’t.”
Stark drops beside them. “Sure you would.”
“I have all of you,” Phil says, aiming for a laugh. “I don’t have the time.”
She has it both ways, or neither. There is no space left in her life. Unless the kid glowed in the dark or fought aliens in its spare time, what would she do with it? Phil knows where her priorities lie and she isn’t cruel enough to want a baby that would always come second to her job.
Instead, she has superheroes. So instead of being Fury’s right hand, and a level seven agent, she’s Supernanny. She can’t even blame anyone else because she did it once and it worked, and Phil is all about efficiency. So now she’s den mother to the kids who never learned the word no. That maybe gets to her a little.
Phil accompanies Bruce down to medical and then goes to check that Thor’s not reacting too badly to his brother’s reappearance.
Somewhere between the two of these things happening, she runs into Agent Langer. He says, “Babysitting duty again?”
“I’m in a hurry, Langer, thank you.”
“Of course, I’ll let you get back to it. I’m glad you were around. I mean, if they asked me to play Mary Poppins to those- well. It’s good you’re here to take care of that. It leaves the rest of us free to worry about the other stuff. I don’t know if you heard: we got the bridge secured, got the civilians clear.”
She honestly can’t tell if that’s meant to be an insult. She is insulted, but she’s not sure what he meant. “I heard,” she says. “We can debrief later. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I’m in a hurry.”
She’s most of the way down the corridor before she hears the whistling. A Spoonful of Sugar. At least now she knows he was doing it deliberately.
Phil deals with the situation with Thor, checks in with Banner again, and gets Darcy to send an internal memo about the new security protocols before it occurs to her that she hasn’t seen Clint in a while.
Darcy says, “He didn’t find you? He was looking for you around medical. Though I saw him a few minutes ago and I think he was looking for someone else? One of the agents, the weird one.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much in this place.”
“Langer, maybe? He looked sort of mad.”
“Langer or Barton?”
“Clint. I don’t know, he had Natasha with him.”
That can’t bode well.
She hears the low whisper before she spots his shadow, cornering Langer in the hallway. Phil studies the darkness until she can make out Natasha’s form lurking a little behind. Clint whispers, “Two things to consider. One, if you’re wrong about Agent Coulson, and she wasn’t too busy being worried about us to notice you being completely fucking insubordinate to a senior agent, then you’re pretty much screwed. Two, if you were right and Agent Coulson is pseudo-mommy to our little crew of freaks and psychopaths then,” - Phil sees the glint of Natasha’s knife – “what exactly did you think was going to happen when you messed with her?”
Phil coughs. “Barton. Romanoff. Make yourselves scarce.”
Natasha nods sharply. Clint takes a step away from Langer. “Whatever you say, ma’am.” It’s a warning and a promise, and Phil needs neither of them.
Phil looks at Langer. “I apologise for Barton. I’ll speak to him.”
Langer points an unsteady finger at Phil’s chest. “Everybody knows you-.”
“Shut up.”
“You-.”
“Now.” Phil turns on her heel, and goes to find Clint and Natasha.
They’re lurking in the corner of the ready room. Natasha is still spinning the knife. Phil crosses the room. “If I ever hear the two of you threatening another agent without provocation again, it’ll be the last thing you do here. Is that understood?”
Clint stands up straight. “It wasn’t without provocation.”
Natasha nods. “Ma’am.”
“I don’t need you to defend me.”
Clint wrinkles his nose. “Who said you did?”
Natasha says, “He’s the one who’s been spreading the rumours, it must be.” Phil hasn’t talked to Natasha about those, but there are no secrets in this building. Natasha asks, “Would you have let him talk like that about one of us?”
Phil wouldn’t have, of course, but that is not the part that matters. It is different for her. Clint doesn’t understand, and Natasha understands but doesn’t care. Phil can’t be seen to be asking her team to threaten people on her behalf, or to squash rumours for her. She can’t rely on them for her defence. As soon as she does that, she loses. Phil rubs her temples. “Don’t do it again.”
“Ma’am,” Clint protests.
“You said whatever I wanted, Clint, well I want this. Leave it alone.”
Clint folds his arms. “Fine. But I reserve the right to thoroughly humiliate him and his ‘sharpshooters’ on the range every day from now to Revelations. Elite tactical team my ass.”
Phil shakes her head. “Knock yourself out. If Fury asks, we’ll call it tough love training.”
*
Phil hates these things. She, comfortable in a suit as a second-skin, would rather see any other words on an invite than black-tie. She could go in uniform, technically. If she was heading security, she could wear the field-suit, but Maria won that particular coin toss and one of them needs to be around to press the flesh.
Fury doesn’t make it an order, of course. He doesn’t mention it at all.
Which is why Clint leans back in his chair in her office, nearly tipping over, and says, “So wear a suit. Wear a tux, if they care that much.”
Phil taps her fingers on the desk. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because these people pay for us. They fund everything from the Helicarrier right down to the paperclips to hold the reports together. That includes, I should note, every variety of explosive, biochemical, or otherwise destructive thing that you like to fire at unsuspecting enemy combatants.”
Clint raises an eyebrow. “Sometimes I fire them at friendlies too. It depends how Bruce is doing on the day.”
“Yes. So.”
“So you have to wear a dress.” He doesn’t sound convinced by the logic.
Phil resists the urge to bang her head against the desk. “Yes. Because some of us can’t just choose to say hell with it and do our own thing. Some of us need to convince not terribly enlightened Senators and CEOs that SHIELD in general, and the Avengers Initiative in particular, is a worthwhile investment.”
“Still not sure where the ball gown fits in.”
Phil rolls her eyes. “It’s not a ball gown. And go away now.”
Clint walks to the door, reconsiders, and comes back to stand in front of her desk. He looks no more certain than before. “I could come with you?”
“What?”
“To the thing. Unless that would be worse.”
“You hate meet and greets. And Senators and CEOs. And people, really.”
Clint smiles. “And you hate party dresses, so we’ll be even.”
“I’m not making you go. You’ll be bored stiff and end up shooting someone.”
“I’m not asking you to make me go, and I promise I’ll only shoot someone if they deserve it.”
*
Clint strips out of his tuxedo jacket as he’s running. She follows him into the catering kitchen where he grabs a knife and passes it to her. He had a gun, at least, if not his bow. She has hers too, even if she does have to reach through the slit in the side of her dress to reach it. Clint grins at her and then peers around the door. He says, “They’re looking for someone.”
“Senator Hyde.”
“Why him?”
Phil shrugs. “She’s on the Homeland Security Committee, she’s got an important vote but-.”
“But so do a lot of people?”
“Yes.” Many of them in that same ballroom. Phil finds her radio. “Maria, where are you?”
Clint is still looking out of the narrow gap in the doorway. Phil lets Maria coordinate the teams, while she hunts for something else to wear.
Clint turns around, flushes, and turns back to the door. Phil steps out of her dress and pulls on the jeans and t-shirt left by one of the servers (probably currently out there with the hostages). She hangs the dress over the rack. Phil still wants to arrange a meeting with Van Dyne, and destroying one of her creations doesn’t seem the best way to go about it.
Clint looks at Phil suspiciously. “Did you plan this?”
“No. Did you?”
“Nope. Just a happy coincidence then. Can I shoot someone now?”
“If you think they deserve it.”
He nods at the door. “You go right, I’ll go left. Hill’s coming in from the other side?”
Phil nods back. “Ready when you are.”
Clint moves.
Phil follows him, mirroring his path around the hostage-takers. She can hear the shots fired at the doors; Maria’s coming in with her guys. Phil fires. She has done this – with Maria, with Natasha, with Clint – more often than she would like to count. Clint doesn’t work well in close-quarters with people he doesn’t know, but he knows her. She moves into the spaces he is leaving for her and every shot gets her closer to the hostages.
The firefight takes ten minutes – it’s the part after that lasts a while. On the one hand, Phil feels that they adequately demonstrated the speed and excellence of SHIELD responses to threat. On the other hand, many of the people she needed to sign cheques are now wrapped in shock blankets. She’s probably going to have to dress up again some time soon. However, there’s not much more they can do tonight. She rides back with Clint, him beside her in the front seat.
When they get back to SHIELD, Clint cocks his head to look at her. “Did you steal that kid’s jeans?”
Phil looks to the heavens. “Don’t tell me: you preferred the dress?”
Clint is silent for a moment. He taps the back of her hand. “No.”
“No, what?”
“I didn’t prefer the dress? I mean, there’s no good answer to that question, honestly, but if you mean- Phil, I like you in anything.”
Phil has never been sentimental. She can still breathe; her heart doesn’t skip. She wants him to say it again; she wants to touch him back. The true disaster of it is: this isn’t a new feeling. He just hasn’t made it so clear before, not so much that she would say anything back. Their first mission together was six and a half years ago and she knows him pretty well by now.
Phil turns to meet his eyes. “Clint.”
“Yeah?”
She borrows one of his own favourite metaphors. “Shoot straight.”
“Phil.”
“Don’t mess around. You’ve been- what do you want?”
“Whatever you want.”
“You shouldn’t say that.” She shakes her head. “You don’t know what I want.”
“So tell me.”
Phil says it clearly, once. If he runs now, at least there will be no misunderstanding. “I want you to come back with me to my quarters so I can fuck you.”
Clint bumps her shoulder. “I told you we were on the same page.” Then he waits for her to start walking, so he can follow her.
Phil used to have an apartment, but she gave it up when she realised that most days she spent longer travelling between it and SHIELD than she did between its walls. Now she has a two-room set in one of the basements at headquarters, close enough to the elevators to get to the office in a hurry, but on a corridor without much other traffic. It means she can get Clint inside without causing a scene. “Stay here. Maybe close your eyes.”
He obediently shuts his eyes and turns around. Phil kicks off her shoes and pulls the shirt over her head. She can hear Clint stepping out of his uniform. She turns away too, hunting in one of the drawers. It’s been a little while.
“Okay,” Phil says. “You can-.”
Clint is sitting on the edge of her bed. He looks at her up and down and swallows. “Christ.”
She steps towards him and he slides off the bed. He rests his hands on her hips, tracing over the edges of the straps. His thumbs press circles. He sinks onto his knees in front of her. “Okay?”
“… okay.”
He keeps his hands on her skin. He wraps his mouth around the plastic and pulls her closer, rubbing it tighter against her.
She bites her lip. “Clint.”
“Mmm.” He hums around it.
Phil curls her hand around his jaw, sliding up to where his cheeks are hollowed. She bends herself nearly double to kiss the top of his head. She lets him just suck for a while, moaning around it. She closes her eyes and breathes. “Okay. Let’s go over to-.”
He pulls his mouth off with a pop. “Bed?”
She walks him backwards to the edge of the bed and guides him onto it. He turns over onto hands and knees. It’ll be easier that way. Phil strokes her fingers down his spine. “Comfortable?”
“Better if you do something.”
She smiles. “Give me a minute.” Phil uncaps the lube, and watches the expansion of Clint’s chest as he breathes. He exhales slowly as she slides one finger in. “Okay?”
“I think we talked about fucking?”
He laughs during sex. That’s something Phil could have predicted but it’s different to know. She opens him up with a second finger, and then a third. She slides her hand up the dildo, pressing it against her clit. She moans and Clint leans over his shoulder to look at her. He raises his eyebrow. Phil laughs too.
She slides on her knees closer to him on the bed. She takes a breath and guides the strap-on into him. Clint’s fingers twist in the bedspread. Phil waits until he’s settled before she moves again.
When she gets it all the way in, she’s pressed her thighs against the back of his legs. She leans over him, kissing his back. “Okay for me to start the fucking now?”
“You are a wicked woman,” he murmurs.
“But that’s why I’m your favourite.”
“Absolutely,” he answers, barely above a whisper but she can hear him perfectly.
Her hips jerk, and he gasps. That’s the kind of pace the two of them set together.
Clint is responsive like no one else she’s ever known. She’s never known anyone as well as she knows him. When she reaches around to get her hand on his cock he bucks back against her. “Phil. Christ, Phil.”
“Yeah. I’m right here, right with you. You feel so- Clint.”
He comes first, sighs. He says, “Hang on, hang on,” and shifts forward away from her. The dildo slides free and Clint turns over on the bed. “Let’s try like this for a while.”
“You’ve already,” she says and he shrugs.
“You haven’t. C’mon. Fuck me.” He pulls his legs up and out of the way.
When she slides in this time there is no resistance. He twitches, a little, not going to come again but oversensitive. He reaches down and slides careful fingers past the straps.
Clint brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks deep on them.
He reaches back down to where she is swollen and wet and so ready by now. Phil presses forward, close against him on the bed. If she stretches, she can reach his mouth.
Phil bites Clint’s bottom lip and he moans. He says, “You know you do that- the first time I saw you.” He’s talking quickly, as if she might try and stop him. Phil rolls her hips, looking for a better angle and finding it. She gasps and Clint’s voice hitches too like a reflection of her want, though her hand is still sticky with the evidence of his first. Clint says, “You had one hand on your gun and you- you smiled without opening your mouth, and you had been talking to me for hours already. I knew it was you and I-. And I just wanted-.”
“What?” she asks.
“Fuck, I don’t know. Everything,” he says. “You.”
*
In the morning, when Phil turns her head, she can see that Clint is asleep with his mouth open. There’s no sunlight this deep inside headquarters, but it feels like a good morning all the same.
Clint opens his eyes. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Are you planning on throwing me out of bed?”
“Why would I do that?”
He rolls towards her. “Okay,” he says. “You too.” He kisses her shoulder and closes his eyes again.
Phil can tell he’s about to fall back to sleep. She can also tell that her cell phone is about to ring. She answers it when the screen lights up, before it makes a noise. “Coulson. Yes, okay. Thirty minutes.” Phil pokes Clint in the shoulder. “You need to get up.”
“A) I thought you weren’t throwing me out? B) No, ‘baby, that was great last night’, just straight to the ‘time to save the world’ shit?”
Phil kicks aside the blankets and straddles Clint’s thighs. “Baby,” she says, as serious as she can make it, “that was great last night. But now it’s time to go save the world. Get yourself together. If we make it back before midnight, maybe we can try again tonight.”
Clint looks up at her. “I have no witty comeback to that. Okay, I’m waking up, I swear. I guess if you’re going to save the world, I’m going to have to come too.”
Phil braces her arm on the headboard and leans down to kiss him. “Glad to hear it.”
They have thirty minutes, and there’s a better than middling chance Clint is going to follow her into the shower. He’s going to make her late, or at least try his very best in the attempt. He has worse habits than that one, and Phil already knows them all. She gets out of bed, and waits for him to follow. Clint’s knuckles brush the bare skin of her back, and Phil smiles.